Hello guys!I plan on getting this phrase tattooed as soon as I get a good translation. The tattoo is in honor of my late mother who was Irish. The phrase is quite tricky, since it can be a bit ambigious, at least in English. "She protects me from the sea" what I want to express through this phrase is that she (my mother) is protecting me from her resting place, which is the sea, not that she is protecting me from a specific menace, that menace being the sea. In English it can be ambigious if it's out of context. I'm not sure if that ambiguity is present in Irish as well, since I am not very familiar with the language's grammar and mechanics. I would like the phrase to be translated as close as possible to the original to avoid losing the meaning, again if that ambiguity is present In Irish as it is in English, I wouldn't mind the translation being ambigious as well. Sorry for my long explanation, I just want to make sure to get the best translation possible without losing the meaning. Hope I can get some help from you guys. Thanks in advance.

Right, I totally get what you are saying Labhrás. I guess Irish is like Spanish in a way, where there are 2 different from's to mean different things, and it's not ambigious, unlike English. Is there any reason why in this translation sea is muir and not farraige, I just got that translation from google translate for sea (I know it's almost a sin to use that tool especially for Irish) just curious to know the difference. Thanks a bunch for your help anyhow. I'll just wait for a couple more replies, just like they suggested.

Right, I totally get what you are saying Labhrás. I guess Irish is like Spanish in a way, where there are 2 different from's to mean different things, and it's not ambigious, unlike English. Is there any reason why in this translation sea is muir and not farraige, I just got that translation from google translate for sea (I know it's almost a sin to use that tool especially for Irish) just curious to know the difference. Thanks a bunch for your help anyhow. I'll just wait for a couple more replies, just like they suggested.

In usage they are largely interchangeable, meaning sea or ocean. I'm not aware of dialectical preferences, though they may exist, and there are some expressions where one is preferred over the other. Note that we have two words in English as well, sea of Germanic origin (and possibly of pre-indo-European origin before that), and ocean of Latin/French origin.

The word muir is cognate with similar words in other Indo-European languages, such as mare in Latin. According to Dwelly's Etymological Dictionary, farraige is related to the word fearg ("anger"), and in Scottish Gaelic fairge can mean a stormy sea.

Scottish Gaelic actually has a third word as well. The word cuan, which in Irish generally means a bay or harbor, can in Scottish Gaelic be used for the sea ("air àird a chuain" = "on the high seas"). Dwelly's says that cuan is of Norse origin (related to the word which became "haven" in English, and is Hafen in Modern High German). In fact, it may also be ultimately from a pre-Indo-European language, since many seafaring terms in the Germanic languages appear to be not of Indo-European origin, one theory being that they were absorbed from the language of an earlier sea-faring people already present in northern Europe when speakers of Indo-European languages arrived on the scene.

_________________I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Wow! That's a very detailed explenation CaoimhínSF, thank you so much for taking the time to clear my doubt. I think I will get it with the word muir in there just like Labhrás initially wrote it, it sounds pretty fluent when you say it, with farraige it sounds a bit odd, at least in the fluency of speech anyways (just a personal thought). I did get that feeling muir sounded like sea in Spanish at first "mar", it has got the same Indo-European root down the road, makes sence. Thanks a bunch guys for all your help, and of course if anyone else wants to pitch in with a different translation, be much appreciated. Cheers!